Vector 13: Kevin Michaluk on what happened to BlackBerry

It happened to Palm. It's happening to BlackBerry. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung might be insulated by their revenue from other businesses, or they might not. No company stays on top, or even in the game, forever. So, we interrupt our usual programing to get Kevin Michaluk of CrackBerry.com back on the line so he can explain to us what the hell is happening with BlackBerry. The reaction to the iPhone, the detour of the PlayBook, and the launch of BB10. No. Holds. Barred.

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Vector 13: Kevin Michaluk on what happened to BlackBerry

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Kevin never said something like what he said in this podcast. I'm wondering why ? Kevin used to show us that Blackberry is good, its coming back, BB7 devices are the best, playbook is good, and …etc.
Suddenly he changed his mind !

When you've spent 5 years following a show, watching the characters develop and grow, forming ties with them, having it all lead up to one final moment, it sucks to have some snot-nosed d*uche take that moment away from you.

So what's really interesting here is the timing of this recording. Rene called me on Skype at 7:50am Saturday morning to record this show. I was literally talking to him at the same time that the Globe and Mail "Inside BlackBerry" article went up yesterday.

I read through that article in full this morning finally... we're going to do another follow up podcast / editorial on the Globe piece. There's a few interesting things in there that I want to discuss specifically. But reading that article and listening to this podcast there is a decent amount of consistency. I think I actually go into better detail on a few of the "mistakes" that have been made over the years. More to come. But hope you all enjoy this show in the mean time!

There's often talk about Heins, Balsillie, Lazaridis and even Frank Boulben, but someone who deserves a lot of criticism in this saga is Alec Saunders. He has a hell of a background and is definitely a smart guy, but he's largely responsible for the app situation, clearly went for quantity over quality (port-a-thons, 47,000 spam apps by S4BB) and was unable to bring in the popular mainstream apps. He should have, IMHO, at the very least had a pro team bring over android apps in a careful, stable way to fill in major gaps, instead of just hoping it might get done.

Just to clarify, there are two "app teams" at BlackBerry. One half is Alec Saunder's team, the other half is Marty Mallick's team. Alec's team is tasked with building out the dev rel program as it relates to getting all the independent type of developers out there building apps for the platform. Marty's team deals with the big name existing mainstream app players, etc. in working with them to get their titles onto the platform.

I didn't know that. That changes my perception of Saunders completely. Then Marty Mallick is the one I'm referring to! Although Saunders is responsible for a huge amount of "spam" to drive total app numbers...

Having been close to lore than a few folks at Blackberry, I can say Alec really is one of those 'who gives a darn' and he really does a great job. Many times I've asked him for favors and information on changes etc and he has always gone above and beyond.

Blackberrys greatest asset today is arguably the independent developer movement they started - no other independent movement has evert existed for mobile that I've seen. We have thousands of new developers who suddenly started building mobile. These guys are going to remember that forever and the blackberry brand has become one with them.

I have always wondered what would have happened if Alec had control of all of blackberry. From a junior dev relations perspective, he's been a great leader.

That was my initial thinking, but given that he was responsible for the independent devs, why not? I agree that it's mostly spam, but all app stores have a lot of spam. And large numbers can be beneficial for statistical purposes. It's Mallick that deserves to be fired. He wasn't able to bring in the required mainstream apps. He's the one who failed as far as apps are concerned, not Saunders.

You've got to read all of the posts since my first one. I was unaware that Marty Mallick was responsible for the mainstream side of apps. I was accusing Saunders of things that were Mallick's fault. My perception of Saunders was wrong.

Oh yea I know, it's a common misconception so I don't blame you for making it....just said that by making it, the value of your opinion (based on your knowledge of the running of the company) looses some credibility ;)

That's fair. I have a pretty good read on the company and I've followed them since 2006, but I thought Saunders was the main dev guy since 2011. He's always been the visible one when it came to apps. It's a big fail for me.

...but the product itself is in a 'premium' category...I had no problem paying top dollar for my Z, and I still don't. I run mine like a PC, it's a great solid device (as is the Q, I own both). I know that they have been priced down, but initially they were priced as per the segment they were entering and that was the $500-600+...It's like telling Mercedes to drop their prices because they are being outsold by Toyota...

Alec is the wrong person to blame. The developer outreach from BlackBerry is generally phenomenal. Leaps and bounds above any other mobile platform. Of course, they're doing it because they have to. Apple doesn't have to give a damn about their developers because they have the users, so developers will build for them anyways. BlackBerry is in the opposite situation, and really did give it there all with developer relations. The $10,000 guarantees, the limited edition developer devices, hackathons, and monetary incentive for creating apps (at times) were all great programs. Sure, some people abused them, but generally I think they worked as best as could be asked. They even gave it their all with big companies, as well, dumping time and money into trying to convince major players to support them. At the end of the day, it's just hard/impossible to build a developer ecosystem from scratch, in today's market.

Not the other way around. That's why there is no room in the mass consumer market for Blackberry. They never did focus on mass market other then floating on the ping momentum. To little innovation to late. And a few public examples of BlackBerry showing they where not focused while they had always said they were (some call it lying and people don't forget these incidents). My 2 cents.

By providing device that the customers (in mass) want. A majority of customers left because they didn't want keyboards, they wanted large screens And they wanted faster browsers. The developers followed the money and provided apps where the customers went

Expecting more is simply ridiculous. Apps are arriving every week. Certain key apps are missing for commercial reasons but otherwise there are tens of thousands of apps.

And while the Globe article does flesh out some background, it's one sided and shows a lack of understanding of the overall marketplace. Kevins piece actually provides a far more balanced and nuanced view of what happened.

Kevin knows all!
Alot of interesting stuff coming to the surface here recently. But it feels all like an after thought on a closed story. On your next follow lets hear some more about how it can still be turned around, if at all. Can upper management STILL not see what we see?

I read the Globe and Mail piece yesterday and although very enlightening... It was not nearly as therapeutic as listening to Kevin talk it out... I had the pod cast going on my PlayBook, while I worked, and was honestly kinda sad that it ended. Is that weird? Am I the only one?

Oh, and Rene is an excellent interview/round table discussion moderator.

Kevin-The biggest problem why BlackBerry 10 failed is their pricing strategy. Famous apps don't come to your platform when your world market share is like 2% or now even less. It comes when its atleast 5% and plus. Blackberry 10 hardware when launch was EXTREMELY expensive which put off most buyers. Why would they not buy an iPhone or Samsung S4 when there is no difference in the pricing. Idiotic management to keep the pricing so high. They should have kept a pricing low, improved manufacturing productivity and made sure maximum number of people get to experience the BB10 platform. What about the special discount program for old BB Legacy users? They even screwed that. Initial lower priced equipment would have not let to writedown of such a huge Z10 inventory. May be they would have just breaked even on hardware Operating Profit Margins but that would have saved the company and its value. In future we would have covered the same via BBM etc monetization. Most horrible management which such a BRAND could get. Someone please ask what were they thinking when they priced the Z10 and Q10 and Q5 so exorbitantly high? Are consumers FOOLs?

+1 000 000 000 They re pricing strategy was way too high from the moment they released the PlayBook. Even I knew that then that they should have priced it cheaper to make it more appealing and the fact it wasn't even complete. Same goes for the BB 10 models to expensive.

Great interview Kevin. There was one thing in the interview that you glossed over that I think really negatively affected the perceptions of BlackBerry in the U.S. and that was the reputation created by the original BlackBerry Storm. I got one in Nov/Dec 2008 as part of being a member of the Verizon Wireless Customer Council (which was run by a marketing group in Verizon). BlackBerry didn't sell a ton of Storms because it was a good device. They sold a ton of them because Verizon had a huge marketing campaign for the launch of that device right before the Christmas 2008 shopping season. They were advertising it everywhere. They even had a BlackBerry Storm hunt contest in the NYC area which was a sort of scavenger hunt. Remember that Verizon didn't have the iPhone in 2008 and they were losing customers to AT&T because of it so they were hoping the Storm would be the answer but obviously it wasn't. The BB OS that was released with that phone was so buggy that it ruined the experience and it took Verizon/BlackBerry 6 months to release an official BB OS version that fixed most of the bugs. This is an eternity when someone is using a device that's supposed to be the best BlackBerry available and a competitor to the iPhone. And remember this was before BlackBerry supported OTA updates so most non technical Verizon customers wouldn't have even have found out about the updated OS and the only way to get the update was by loading Blackberry Desktop Manager on your PC, downloading the update and manually installing which the majority of customers were simply not going to do. The only other way to get the OS update was to visit tech support in a Verizon retail store and requesting the update which again isn't something that most customers would do. About a month or 2 after the Storm came out I remember a random girl on the NYC subway who saw me using the Storm stopped me to complain about it because she had it too. I told her that there are leaked OS versions online that she could download to fix some of the bugs but obviously that shouldn't be the solution and she shouldn't have had that bad experience in the first place. After the software update in May/June 2009, the Storm finally worked pretty well but by then it was too late. It's reputation had already been trashed by all the poor reviews from tech websites and from the customers who bought it. And because most average (i.e. non technical) customers didn't upgrade the OS, they were stuck with a buggy BlackBerry for at least a year before they could do an early contract renewal on Verizon and purchase a replacement device. I think one of the reasons why CrackBerry saw such huge growth after the Storm was released was because so many customers were searching for fixes for all the OS bugs. I remember that one of the reasons I was visiting BlackBerry blogs during that time was to keep up with all the leaked OS updates for the Storm so that I could find out if they fixed bugs and didn't create any new major ones and then update my Storm with the leaked OS versions. My guess is that no other carrier in the US ended up picking up a Storm device because it's reputation was so poor. I actually ended up liking the Storm so much after the software update that I bought the Storm 2 when I renewed my Verizon contract in Nov 2009 and the Storm 2 is what the original Storm should have been with a multi-touch screen and built in WiFi. I remember having to convince one of my best friends to replace his BlackBerry Pearl on Verizon with the Storm 2 because someone he knew who had the original Storm told him that it was terrible. By the time most of those Verizon customers who bought the Storm were ready for their next device upgrade in late 2010 and early 2011 (assuming a 20-24 month upgrade cycle), they had plenty of Android devices to choose from as well as the iPhone 4 by Feb 2011 and I'll bet that most of them didn't get another Blackberry like the Curve 9330 or Bold 9650 which were the latest BlackBerries available from Verizon at that time and both non-touch screen devices. The Storm's reputation was so bad that BlackBerry/AT&T launched the touch screen 9800 in August 2010 using the Torch model name. And that was another BlackBerry that had a disappointing experience compared to the iPhone and Android devices that were out at that time. I know specs don't mean everything but the specs of the 9800 were a joke compared to the iPhone 4 and the Android devices that were out at that time. A 3.2" touch screen with a 360 x 480 resolution doesn't compare to the 3.7" to 4.3" Android devices that were out at the time or the iPhone 4 with a 3.5" 640 x 960 retina display. Plus it had the same Marvell processor that were used in BlackBerry models from 1-2 years earlier. The updated specs of the 9810 released a year later should have been the specs of the original 9800 but again it was too little too late for BlackBerry. At that point nobody really cared about BlackBerry anymore. By mid 2011 iPhone and Android owned the smartphone market.

I knew BlackBerry was in deep trouble in April 2011 when Mike Lazaridis said in an interview "I don’t fully understand why there’s this negative sentiment". I just couldn't believe that he was that clueless about what was happening in the smartphone market simply because they had huge profits and growth for the years leading up to 2011. They really needed to have an answer to the iPhone and Android by the Christmas 2010 shopping season (6 months before that interview and as Kevin implied during this interview) but they didn't and when they didn't have something ready by Christmas 2011, I think everyone knew they were doomed. It's sad that they didn't release the Z10 1 or 2 years earlier because maybe they'd have some sort of market share right now.

I'm still rooting for Blackberry and I was considering getting one when my Verizon contract is up. I really like the BlackBerry Hub and that's one of the OS features I miss most that I don't have on Android. It would be nice to have a unified inbox like BlackBerry Hub to get all the messages in one place from multiple email accounts, text messaging, cross platform messaging apps like WhatsApp/Kik/Viber/etc and social networks like Twitter/Facebook/etc. I'm wondering if BlackBerry could make the Hub as an app and make it available for iOS and Android. That's something I would pay for.

Great post! I had a horrible experience with my Torch 9800. I had 6 of them fail on me with an unending reboot cycle that never responded to any of the known fixes. I finally asked if I could get an upgrade to a 9810 for all my trouble. Which they did and I never had a problem with that phone running OS 7.1.

Even with that bad experience I wasn't scared off by BlackBerry and I'm currently very happy with my Z10 which has run without a hiccup or any unwanted reboots or crashes since the US launch on AT&T in March. I'm currently running AT&T'S 10.1 update (OS 10.1.0.2019). It sucks that I haven't spotted even one other Z10 while out "in the wild" since then...

1. 6 months to get bugs out of storm. Lack of urgency here. Problems like that must be fixed in 6 days not 6 months.
2. Lazaridis: " I don't understand. . .". Indeed, that is the core reason BB is in this mess.

Thanks. I agree that the bugs should have been fixes in days not months. 6 months is an eternity to fix numerous bugs that customers are dealing with on a daily basis. Notice how quickly Apple fixes bugs in their OS and they would have never released an OS as buggy as the OS that was released with the Storm 9530 and they certainly wouldn't have let the bugs remain for 6 months. If I had been RIM (at that time) not only would I have fixed the bugs quickly, I would have contacted every owner with instructions on how to get the software update since it wasn't available as an over the air update. RIM could have sent a PIN message or had Verizon send an email or text message with instructions.

There have been articles indicating that Lazaridis wants to buy back the company. I really hope he doesn't succeed. You might as well put the final nail in the coffin if he does.

Great podcast. You deliver a unique yet insightful of what went wrong and why and I think you touch a lot of good points here. I however did not hear anything geared towards the furies and the tone although I get that you are exhausted did sound like you have a hit give up on the platform. It almost sounded like you wanted to have android on BlackBerry phones. Having played with both BlackBerry 10 and android, I really like the look and feel of BlackBerry 10 and cascades is awesome but perhaps it could have been achieved with Android as well. What could not is the QNX effect, m2m perspective, super multitasking but still these still need to deliver to users which is not the Case now.

I d like to hear Kevin sharing his insight on the future of BlackBerry. We know the mistakes, we understand them now let us learn from that, get up and do something.

I think that the app gap should be approaches using the Android runtime and somehow convincing google to play well (google services) here although that sounds difficult. For the rest build exclusive apps and use cascades for everything native and for devs already engaged.

Kevin, your analysis was good and well articulated. While hindsight is 20/20, I suppose maybe going the Android path may have been a better option, although I still have very strong arguments against it. I am of the opinion that instead, they should have downplayed the hard push for native apps and instead pushed hard on the virtual Android support and given it a positive marketing spin. It was always viewed negatively from get go and never effectively promoted by Blackberry. The beleive that they could get most major apps to be ported natively was always going to be a zero sum game. If they had secured far more development resources into providing better Android VM support, particularly binary support the whole app issue may have been much less of an issue. Even if BB10 was Android based, they would have changed the UI enough to be non-standard Android where there would still have been UI compatibility issues between the Native Android apps and the customized Android UI provided by Blackberry.
With respect to the Globe and Mail article, there was nothing really new there except for the SMS 2.0 initiative by Jim Balsillie. That was quite interesting and gives Balsillie a lot more credibility as a result. However, I just can't help but feel there is much more to that story.

It's a decent retrospective podcast for those who haven't been following the day to day over the years. For people who have followed the BlackBerry story all the way through on this site, don't think there's anything groud breaking in here that we haven't discussed a million times already. But this sums up a lot of it in one show.

I think there's stuff in your podcast that fills in a few blanks and it's more balanced than the Globe article. Not sure why but the Globe seem to have a downer on BlackBerry. The company isn't dead, yet. And as you state in the podcast, up until this last quarter, volumes aren't that far of their best numbers.

I'm sorry but you'd have to be an idiot to claim that when you can just shut it off. Like a lot of BlackBerry headlines, that one sounds great if you want to hate on Apple but overall it's a fluff headline.

Don't make the mistake of thinking dislike or misunderstanding is akin to jealousy ;)

Apple has its share of enemies - legitimately - as well. For example their insistence developers use a Mac to build for iOS. Further, they are next to go through the blackberry spin down. Customers are starting to realize Apple is stagnant and dying with a slightly crippled OS.

We saw how that went for BlackBerry a few years down the road. Anyway, regardless, that gap will always continue to increase as apple keeps it's slow bleed to Wp8, bb10 and Android.

The only thing missing from iTunes is a consolidated list of all items across all devices... like if they had a column with a checkbox for every device that you could see in iTunes, and then if you have an iPad and iPod and your main media library, you could see at a glance which items are on each device and, if you notice that two items that are effectively the same item but iTunes seems to be confused about that, you could say "no, this song on my iPod 'bad Romance' is the same as this song in my library 'Bad Romance' so just treat them the same and sync them the same, please" that would go a long way to making iTunes actually useful.

How is selling 9 million phones in one weekend a slow bleed? Mobile technology is converging and consolidating and as a result newer innovative features are going to fewer are far between. I predict that a lot more innovation is going to happen with peripherals than the devices themselves in the short term.

Well it is a big number, but this is number on Apple papers, doesn't mean that 9 million ppl bought it. It's 9 million iPhones delivered to resselers and providers, who already paid to Apple. It would be interesting to look at their numbers just after 1 or 2 weeks. Do u really think they gonna post this big numbers every week/month?

He was just describing a report. Stay cool. In an event, the reports I read (not the one linked) suggest you cannot turn it off completely. Just to reduce extent of animation. But then I have not used iOS7 myself.

Failed? Stagnant? Are you on crack? 9 million iPhones sold in three days. Over 60% adoption rate of iOS 7 already. All major devs and their apps have been updated to embrace iOS 7. Get off of the Apple hate train. It just makes you look childish. And pathetic.

As for the "motion effects", which is properly called Parallax, it can all easily be turned off with one switch in the settings. Stop the hate, and get informed.

Even Kevin loves iPhones and paid $1,500 for his gold 5s. Find something more constructive to do with your time, other than inventing ways to try to diss Apple.

Instead of being condescending you could have just helped the various posters by directing them back to the Forbes article where there are several proposed ways to deal with iOS7's problems. For example: "Medications including antihistamines (meclizine or dramamine), phenothiazines (promethazine or prochlorperazine), as well as benzodiapines (diazepam or lorazepam) may help to ameliorate symptoms– along with keeping your self well hydrated and reducing caffeine and salt intake."

The article also noted there are various forms of physical therapy that can help you use your iPhone without nausea vomiting but advised that you should consult your healthcare provider to discuss the various approaches to your symptoms.

Oh boy. Refer to Blaze's comment above. Do you have an iPhone running iOS 7? If you do, you will find that "reduce motion" does indeed turn off parallax. I'm going to to take it that you don't. Thus, the uninformed comment. Good day to you.

The corporation I work for won't let us install OS7 but it is on my personal iPad. The comment in the article I was referring to was (I understand now) referring to something other than parallax. I actually didn't know the word parallax until recently but I do know the feeling of nausea he's talking about: "Zoom animation, which creates the effect of data zooming in and out as you tap on an icon—splashing or “flying into and out of the screen”–may be responsible for the perceived nausea, headaches and dizziness which a number of consumers have recently described. Although zoom animation was integrated in previous iOS versions, it’s presence was much less compared to now, each time an app folder is opened." As far as I know that can't be reduced or turned off.

Been on here a long time and just had to finally comment. I started with BB years ago and loved them, especially my Bold. But, when I started having problems getting on to certain websites I needed for work (because of the BB browser), I had to make a change. Went to Samsung (felt cheap, bad phone reception and did not like android), Nokia Lumia (not good for business at all) Microsoft really has to do some work if they want this to sell to anyone but a casual user. Always swore I would never buy an Apple product. But, had to have a tablet so got a Samsung. Tried to get it to do what I needed from a tablet (what Samsung said it would do...simple thing like copy/paste) wouldn't do it. After looking all over the internet for why it wouldn't work (Samsung said to do a factory reset...right do that about 50 times a day) I took it back, bit the bullet and got an iPad 4. Did exactly what I need right out of the box and works like a charm. Loved it. So when my phone upgrade came due, I got the iPhone 5s. It does everything I need and more. It is the closest thing to my Bold I have come across yet. I never would have left BB if they had just kept up with things the way the should have. Hell, I even bought a Playbook. Got that before the Samsung or the iPad. I really did try to stay with BB....problem is the wouldn't or couldn't try to keep me.

I understand the theme of this comment. I work with about six people that use iPhones. They are bewildered at best. One of them gets it. They have been complaining about it all week. I've heard posts on radio shows of morning hosts ripping on it.

not that it's the biggest deal. But could it be the beginning of Apple alienating their base?

I was asked what I thought about the article yesterday and that was one of the first things that came to my mind. It's easy to look back and see what could have and should have been done but that's not the important part, it's what you take from the mistakes that matters in end. Hopefully, some lessons were learned.

But the question is, does the public, investors, etc., believe that Blackberry and those involved with the company actually have learned or are capable of learning from previous mistakes? Or are they doomed to repeat said mistakes over and over and over again? From a psychology perspective, we would call this type of thinking "Group Think". Historically, Blackberry has not demonstrated any ability to prevent group think from occurring; rather, they have shown an uncharacteristic natural ability to excel at it (that's a bad thing).

Take a small example; the public, business, and governments, over the years have criticized Blackberry for using the phrase "its coming soon" or any variation therein. They are ridiculed as a company that promises a lot but fails to deliver on just about anything. And when they do deliver, guess what, it's delayed and delayed and delayed yet again. Ergot, any business manager or organizational psychologists would advise Blackberry not to use this phrase as it is associated with a negative, vitriolic hatred and overwhelming skepticism on the part of consumers towards this company. But is that what we see? No, Blackberry continues to make announcements of the "coming soon" variety in which the public just laughs and states, "oh, here we go again". No wonder they used rocking chairs at their latest BBJam session; all of us will be dead by the time anything comes soon.

So to make a long post short (I know, too late), Bla1ze and Kevin are quite correct that to learn from past mistakes is a noble and laudable goal. I would counter that this company is incapable of learning that Tuesday follows Monday. Which explains the tenuous situation they find themselves in today.

Depends on what you consider a positive, I suppose. If you think them going private is a good thing than that is a positive. The Z30 is still being released, that's a positive. BlackBerry is still going, that's a positive.

To say the past few weeks have been disappointing is a bit of an understatement but BlackBerry is still in a position to address the problems and depending on how things go, it could end up being a very positive thing.

No way can BlackBerry compete with Apple and Google in a large scale, especially when many know for a fact people have been brain washed to think iPhones are superior to all others in North America.
What BlackBerry should have done IMO, was launch BB10 in 2012 as scheduled but with the PlayBook 2.0 OS, then in 2013, come out with a MAJOR OS update, the one we have today.

If anybody used the PlayBook you will quickly realize its a lot better than Android and iOS slapped together by far. BB10 leaves them all in the dust.

I'm getting frustrating with all this phoning it in, Kevin. An hour and twenty minute audio file is not something I have the time for. I know this was Rene doing this, but still, audio files and podcasts are only reaching a limited audience.

Any way to get someone on the team to be the official transcriber of posts like this?

We can get podcasts transcribed, I'll ping Rene to get that done for this one. I am lining up a series of posts that will more cleanly (and in writing) revisit a lot of this stuff, but that will be a little ways out.

Also, what I suggest is listening before bed! Put in your BB earbuds and lie in bed and fall asleep to my soothing voice :)

Well if they pull their head out of their AS S then they might have a fighting chance to kick some AS S! It time to clean house andget some real phone people to run the company! Just like if GM wants to make a go at it it needs to clean house dump the unions and get people who are true car people and listen to the customers on what they want and not what Obama wants to jam down our throats!

We love our cars just like we love our phones and BB's so why not give the customers the V8 power and specs and options we all want and build phones that will grip the public and market them in a way they shows how the phones features will work and enhance the end users experince. Who wants a slow useless 4 banger in a car when you can have a V8 that will give you the power and fuel economy as a 4 banger now a days plus all the extras you can put on the car.

Do this with the phones and market them showing the features and keep improving the OS day after day and this will show the world that BB is the phone and OS to have in their pocket and hands!!

Simple aint it?

Now BB make it happen we have been so patient with you and if you keep screwing up you will not have a company left!

There's a lot to speculate about. Because of Blackberry's financial situation, because you can compare them to companies in the past, etc. But nothing will be clear until it gets announced, or simply happens.

BlackBerry has to make decisions, cut off some departments and keep only the necessary and the profitable. They have competent people to make those decisions, therefore I have faith.

Even if only a small part remains of BlackBerry of what they once were, that's good. They can build it again from the ground up, then knowing what mistakes to avoid. From that point, it can only get better.

Also I believe that ING allow you to take a photo of a cheque and deposit it. They allow that on all device platforms including Android....If the banks allow that then Android can't be all that bad. :)

I was visiting Toronto this weekend and spent the afternoon with my wife at the Yorkdale Mall. There is a Microsoft Store right next to the Apple store. The mall was packed. Microsoft was virtually empty and Apple was packed. It's like a cult. BlackBerry should have never gone after Apple head on especially with the App story, and launching a new OS....it sets up a check list type mentality and well we all know who won. BlackBerry should have gone after the prosumer and those looking for an exclusive device just like people search out Rolex and other fine watches. OR they needed to basically give the phones away to get BB10 in the hands of the people. The first quarter was a save so to speak on the backs of die hard BlackBerry fans that were available for upgrade. Now you either need to convert an android or ios7 user. The frenzy in the Apple store is hard to imagine. It really says it all. BlackBerry needs to go after the small percentage of people that buy goods just to be different. Focus on the business side and allow for BB10 to flow to the consumer via that route. The z30 I think is the device to do this. Also, BlackBerry should have its own stores. Market your product with your own people. The carriers and other stores are completely against them. Their staff DO NOT know how to use BB10, DO NOT Personally use BB10 and have zero desire of ever selling one phone....thats a fact!

BlackBerry will survive in the Corporate and Government Sectors! My Z10 is so much better than an iphone!

It's not a cult - its design, apps and ecosystem. My spouse had me replace her playbook with an iPad. Massive improvement in the apps she has- not toys but tools. It's a very high quality product. I walked into thirty outlets in Canada's largest shopping mall. Could not get a white non BlackBerry case or the premium headsets months after the launch. Really? Yup.

You know one thing I never got was why when you see apps being advertised in the "app store " and you see Apple's logo and the Android logo why you wouldn't see the BlackBerry logo? Like WTF - BlackBerry has a lot off the same apps -buy not one person out there knew it! But hey they have a Formula 1 car! Bloody....

The above ^. BB10 has no convenience keys, trackpad, blackberry button, or back button. I know BB10 was meant to go in a different direction. The swipe gestures are great and all.. but after using a BB10 device you realize that everything you did on a blackberry was so much quicker and precise on previous models with the trackpad and hard keys. After all blackberry was all about "getting stuff done" and being more efficient, i feel BB10 was a step in the right direction but they forgot a lot of key pieces that made blackberry great.

Convenience keys together with QuickLaunch has kept me from upgrading from my Bold 9650; it's a breeze and fast to get things done. Just wish I could have a Native "Add to" App so it would work better than the third party one with less clicks (steps).

I wholeheartedly disagree, BB10 is leaps and bounds more efficient then the older BBOS and BB7 hardware. And even though there is a lot of complaints regarding the app ecosystem, it's definitely better IMO then what I had with BB7 devices.

The problem is both current BB7 device owners and anyone coming from any other platform, have trouble with the slight learning that is needed to run a gesture based OS and device. However, once you have the device to be used for a day or two, you can't imagine ever using a phone with physical keys again, with the exception of the Q5 and Q10 of course.

There was a time when Apple appeared to be in trouble. Part of the solution to alleviate consumer fears was to make a dual boot capable system that could run Mac OS and Windows. While most users did not make use of the Windows boot capability, the feature completely addressed issues that the public (and media) felt Apple had with their smaller user base operating system.

I'm not sure how technically difficult it would be, but a BlackBerry that could boot into Android or BB10 would eliminate many news/media arguments, alleviate consumer fears about the future of the devices, and allow new users a chance to try BB10 without worries. While HTC in financial trouble is a good sign that Android is not the path to greater revenues, I believe allowing that boot capability would silence most critics. The hardware design is far better than many Android (only) smartphones.

You're describing something that happened many years after Apple got themselves out of trouble.

What Apple actually did, was cut the fat and put out some flashy products. You know, the original iMac and iBook. These were the colorful products to attract the technically inept. While this was going on, they were investing heavily in completely rebuilding their entire operating system (OS9 -> OSX). Sound familiar?

As OSX started to come out, they had newer/better hardware designs, and then the iPod came along. We all know how it plays out from there. (Mind you, the transition to Intel and the ability to boot Windows came long after all this went down, though before the iPhone.)

The one thing Apple had, which BlackBerry lacked, was an "iMac". You know, a flashy popular product to stop the bleeding and buy time for the development of the next OS to play out.

Flashy products are done in developed markets, because we are near saturation levels on smartphones. Unless carriers drop plan prices, most sales in developed markets will go to replacement device patterns. So with that in mind, Android is the developed markets leader.

One other segment seeing some growth in developed markets is pre-pay phones. This segment is much more price sensitive. BlackBerry needs low price devices to address that market. The planning is similar to that done in emerging markets overseas.

Design is just not going to do it, when sentiment is negative against BlackBerry in the US, especially in the media. If anything, BlackBerry is a very alternative choice. Where marketing fails to address that alternative, is that the thinking by BlackBerry executives is that type of marketing would alienate business users. I think this is the greatest mistake at the company, carried over from the previous coCEOs. While they coddled the executive market, they missed out on growth in consumer demand.

The idea behind my dual boot Android suggestion is that users would be more willing to try a BlackBerry. If it was only Android, then the fate of HTC would await the company. In allowing users a longer time to try a BlackBerry, they may become convinced it is worth keeping, and worth using BB10 instead of Android. The only other thing the company could offer is a one month, full money repayment if not satisfied, trial run, though the carriers would need to not ding people on returns nor on activation charges.

I have no idea why they are trying to make things worse for BB... They just keep brings the (-) side of this up. Maybe if we keep it up less people will buy and we can always say! Yea, we helped take BB down!

When I was considering getting a Z10 I had just the opposite experience. I went to the AT&T store and the person I spoke with had nothing but nice things to say about the phone. The same thing happened when I went to Verizon and to Best Buy. I was expecting them to steer me towards an iPhone or galaxy to say I was surprised by the positivity is an understatement. In fact the sales person at the AT&T store was using the device as his personal device. From what I am hearing though my experiences are the exception and not the norm. I'm sure that if they would have had better marketing the would be in better shape with sales of BB10.

When I went into a phone store the saleswoman was also using a BlackBerry, a Q10. That was only the second time I'd ever seen somebody "in the wild" with one. The first one was a construction builder. Since then I've only seen one or two, though I have seen a bit more Z10s.

Good to hear you had a good experience with the carrier.

--Q10 and Canadian all the way! Posted via CB10 on 10.2.0.1443. #IChooseBlackBerry10

I think is unfair to say that BlackBerry is in this current situation just for their mistakes. You make the BlackBerry executives seem as not qualified for the job, while you know that they are good professionals and all of them extremely smart. The real reason why BlackBerry is in this situation, is because it's up against the whole tech San Francisco ecosystem.

They were in a battle against the brightest minds for electronic consumer goods in the last century, Steve Jobs and Google co-founders. Not to mention the entire US tech ecosystem 'conspiring' for Apple and Google. From Tech Crunch to Zynga, every single company there is putting their five cents to see BlackBerry fail.

I think the executive were scared sh*tless to make a misstep. So everything is mediocre. No thrilling new UI experience. No cutting edge designs (remember that ultra cool slider someone photo shopped) - the Z10 looks like every other phone- meh( even new colours - white or black - wow, no extraordinary new functionality ( the hub- whatever). I would wager a case of Canadian flags we can innovate with the best of them- what saved our banking system and protected Canadians from the plunging house prices - being conservative- cost BlackBerry.

BlackBerry relied on word of mouth thinking that remaining loyal fans were the same people they had a few years ago. They didn't realise that what's left are mostly the workaholic ones who seldom have social life.

There are probably as many Linux users as mac, remember there are many Linux distributions that are completely free; hard to count licenses. Neither mac nor Linux combined are close to windows. Mobile phone market and desktop are very different. Mobile phone is still changing and developing, not so much in PCs. Samsung and android took market share from apple in half the time apple did from BlackBerry

It's not helping the trouble the carriers got themselves into with contractual obligations to sell a minimum number of iPhones in a certain time frame or owe Apple lots of money - search Verizon owes Apple. I would be discouraged from selling other phones too if I was a carrier in that situation. Nonetheless, good marketing can sell just about anything, especially if it's half way decent. Their delays an internal conflicts kept them from being on top, but poor marketing kept them from being successful.

I. Don't. Hive. A dam. What imore,or. Any of these paid hitting as media is. Talking about, I'm. Like Obama on my BlackBerry, your going to have to take it out of my hands,beside BlackBerry is. Just. Trying to go public. That's all,you guys panic to much,,the media is on a mission to get rid of BlackBerry, ,and Kevin, you. Should be on here cursing and fighting for BlackBerry, standing up for then, phuck. Apps,bb is great. Without them. The others platform need em,tgey have to have em

I. Seen the. IPhone. Grow till now. And it. Still ain't shit to. Me. The Sam with Android, my BlackBerry still has abilities. That neither platfrom just doesn't have apps for, I love the fact that. BlackBerry is business first, I use. A grown man's Phone ,,,my 15 year. And. My 13 year old. Has. A bbz10 (white) also. Apple makes you a slave. And android is just unreliable, , BlackBerry to the end, I leave all that other. Shyt to them children,and I'm only 25

shouldn't this go in the "armchair CEO" forum? Just leave it in the hands of the "pros." They're doing great! they're the best exec team ever and the rest of you just don't know what it's like to be a "doer"...a mover and a shaker....lol *and for those who find it challenging to identify sarcasm...yeah...i just laid it on pretty thickly"

BlackBerry will be slimmer, more secretive and more focused company when the dust settles down. At 4.7 bil it's still a bargain. Keep enterprise revenue, roll out cross bbm and license the os for free or little and collect on ecosystem. When the bleeding stops from manufacturing phones the company can focus on building the connected future Heinz was so psyched about...

I think that photo for this article says it all! Blackberry had a chance to redesign their phones, yet the q10 is similar to the Blackberry Bold. Why? I don't know? If they were more aggressive in their designs, I think the situation "could" be different. The design of the Q10 is okay, but when I first saw it, I was not WOWED!? They blew it. Sad.

I agree with Kevin on just about everything except;
-I'm glad BlackBerry didn't go to Android, that's a platform in need of a major re-build almost as much as BB7 was.
-BB's big fail with the BB10 launch was the app gap, why would Joe Blow off the street get a Z10 with it's lack of apps, when he could get a Samsung Galaxy S3 or iPhone 5 that has virtually every app available.

Good review of what BlackBerry did in the past which helped them get into the mess they are in but why has BB10 and the phones been a flop this year? After all, I think we all agree the phones are good. Here are my three reasons for the fail:

1. The marketing department never came up with compelling reasons for Apple/Android users to switch to a new unproven hardware and software system. If you have one of these phones you may have spent dollars on the phone, dollars on apps and spent time learning how to use your phone. Why should you switch? Not enough marketing of the right kind.

2. The phones were too expensive. You want the Apple/Android user to switch and you want him/her to pay top dollar for this?

3. Lack of key apps or good alternatives. You want people to change phones but to do that they have to give up apps they use/like/need.

All these things have come together to make the phones uninteresting to the masses. Considering this year was more or less a do or die year for BlackBerry they sure didn't think this out well. Very disappointing. I hope they continue at least to make a high end phone with continually advanced BB10.

Awesome commentary and summary of BlackBerry, Kevin. I was a late joiner to CB and late to becoming a BlackBerry fan so I learned a great deal from your podcast. It was interesting walk down memory lane.

Sure, it's a eulogy of sorts for BlackBerry as we have known it the past few years.... that doesn't mean the company is by any means dead though. It's just going into it's cocoon and is getting ready to be reborn. Maybe as a beautiful butterly :)

Blackberry screwed it up big time. First, they screwed up with their pricing. The management was greedy with the margins and they priced their products too high. What they really needed was mass acceptance with their existing user base. At least Q5 should have been priced around $250 max. I believe there is still market for that. They have to do that before Blackberry makes its BBM cross patform. Otherwise, Blackberry can say good bye to its hardware division. Even if Blackberry lost money but increased market share with BB10, there would be hope. As Blackberry starts gaining market share, app developers will come and then game is on for Blackberry. Blackberry needs to price Q10 and Z10 at $250 and Z30 at $450. And make BBM cross platform ASAP. Use BBM has marketing channel for BB10 until it can otherwise monetize it. Secondly, Blackberry needs to build trust again with its loyal base. They screwed its loyal base by first abandoning playbook and then pricing their products too high for people who have been waiting so long BB10. Thirdly and most importantly, Heins needs to go. He has shown how incompetent he is in turning around Blackberry. No sense of urgency and no skills in managing market expectations and above all the guy has no Charisma. Blackberry needs a CEO who can change culture from within, starting with purging the top management and then changing perception about Blackberry among public and media.

The Z30 will sell. People, it seems this day, are far more concerned with higher specs so that they can have the latest and greatest rather than having a phone that just works and does many other things, but that is my opinion. They may have a fire sale to get the Z10 into people's hands and that would be a smart move on BB's part. Get the Z10 in people's hands so that they can see how the OS runs and how it will work for them based upon their social and professional needs. Higher specs seems to sell phones like nice, hot pancakes with good maple syrup on them but I would rather have a phone with great battery life than a super specd phone with really crappy battery life

Now I am no business genius but I have stated before that what BlackBerry needs to do to sell stock is buy sales people.

I don't know the exact numbers, but I am sure that some profit is better than none so offer sales staff a commission structure. The staff must register through their relevant employer and will get a direct return from BlackBerry for each handset sold, for example:

On a monthly basis staff would sell handsets and the other big 2 would follow suite real fast but it would STILL put handsets ou there, where they need to be, in consumers hands,

It would show commitment to companies to develop apps (kudos to ING Direct Canada and Sainsburys UK) and it would move that written off stock.

Staff would have to learn the OS to be able to earn the commision having to complete an online assessment during registration, multiple choice, key features and have fully functioning units instore. BlackBerry could supply these with the call function disabled so buyers could experience the handset firsthand.

With the sales force on board the app gap becomes less relevant as I as my friends " how many of your apps do you use on a daily basis?"they soon start to realise that once past the childlike glee of downloading everything MOST consumers need and use little more than an essential few for example; news, rss, ebook, facebook, weather banking and a couple of quick opening and closing games.

I hear cry of mobile content viewing eg Netflix, sorry that just isn't relevant here in the UK or anywhere smaller than continental United States. The world doesn't have the data capacity outside of WiFi and once home I have a TV.

I always dogged Balsillie but I think what happened is no one listened to him. Lazaridus and Heins basically shrugged off Jim's ideas even though they were what the community wanted.

Lazaridus was too focused on what he wanted, not what his consumer base wanted. He wanted a keyboard and didn't think there was room in the market for anymore touchscreen phones. Maybe he was right about room in the market, but clearly the market for full QWERTY devices is a relic.

Cross-platform BBM? Who would want that, Jim? It's best to keep that in-house so our 75 million (and shrinking) client base can benefit from the best messaging application around.

I used to think Jim was the issue, now I get the feeling that he was the only one trying. Oh well. The only people that lose are the schmucks who bought into BB10, its shareholders and its employees. Now I get to shamefully use this lump of Z10 coal until my contract is up in 2 and a half years.

If you bought the Z10 because you liked it, why are you now dreading fulfilling your contract? Nothing is different about the phone now. If you are insecure because your phone is not popular enough, buy an iPhone.

You cannot seriously think that if BlackBerry gets sold that support will be nearly as good as it is now. The updates are atrocious as it is, once BlackBerry gets sold off this phone will see much fewer updates as well as much less app support and updates.

The phone along with the BB10 OS is by far the best any mobile platform has to offer, but support is a huge factor. Once support drops sharply it will spell true disaster.

I can't even think of a world where I have to choose between Apple and Android because either way I'll hate it. I'm either using the dumbed downed iOS or the fragmented Android unless I want to Samsung (which I do not like either).

I apologize for being upset. I'm not trying to troll, but you can't expect everyone to be positively receptive to the turn of events.

Great show Kevin!
I knew the Z10 was crap 3 days after I bought it, but now have a 2 year stint with it and AT&T. I'm out of the BlackBerry World then and never looking back. Like many others, we trusted BlackBerry ; and learned how bad they lie make a $. Customers have tons of choices in phones now, and BlackBerry is not one of them.

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